Over the past month and a half depression has come over me like a big black drop sheet. Big black drop sheet is the way I described my depressions when I was first diagnosed with bipolar in 2004. This particular depression has surprised me, almost come out of nowhere but not: having to stop my meaningful plans, change tack, lie in bed for days, have insomnia, tolerate crying unexpectedly and uncontrollably. Depression has hit me again, and I thought I was an old hand at picking up the signs.

This time sadness, shame and self-hatred have been the most overwhelming emotions surrounding me. For someone so clearly capable to keep banging up against a crashing amount of self loathing has been hard to take. I cry like a little girl, so I’m told, and that is probably true. For the things that I am presently mourning for today are the very same things child-Nicky was attempting to deal with years ago. I know that this is not unusual, maybe something we are all faced with at some point.

I have bipolar II which means I have hypomanias and not manias (hypomanias are energy-based and not psychotic). You also have more depressions than ups. With bipolar II if you track back there is usually a history of the depressions getting increasingly more severe with fewer and fewer hypomanias in between. Bipolar II is also not regular. There are no regular cycles. It can spring up on you at anytime. You can’t predict it, so it is therefore quite hard to manage.

Since my diagnosis, and the therapy that followed, I’ve gone about my life trying to emphasise the well parts of it, which can make you, and others, almost forget that you have an ongoing illness that sits behind your well periods. I’ve come to realise that this attitude isn’t necessarily healthy for me although it might seem like it should be. My capability and energy can unhelpfully mask what illness I have. Over the last 20 + years I have been regularly depressed after anything I have achieved: jobs, creative projects-you name it. Stress triggers my bipolar. It’s hard for me to consistently hold anything down for a length of time. This is a bitter pill to swallow and face. This is further complicated by the fact my self-worth isn’t derived from what I do. It’s derived from how well I look after myself, and generally I do that pretty poorly as I tend to ‘become’ things when I do anything. All my self-care subtly vanishes as I flounder, sabotage and watch my self worth ebb away.

Out of what has happened to me lately I can see that the strategy of treating myself like I don’t have an illness, that I am a ‘well person’, doesn’t necessarily work for me despite its inherent positivity. To keep myself well and catch things early I have to have the fact I have bipolar right in front of me so I can catch things. This is important because symptoms can appear from out of nowhere, escalate and dig-in and before you know it I’m a ‘goner’. I forget that. Like in the summer last year, when all of The Nine Realms threads were coming together and I was very stressed and working 60 hour weeks. I started to change: started hitting myself and becoming very aggressive whilst still feeling full of energy and highly functioning. I became a different person for a while, which I came to understand in hindsight was me in a mixed state (where you are both depressed and energised at the same time). For about three weeks I was not myself, felt dreadful, but was fully able to work and was driven by my intention to follow through on every aspect of The Nine Realms. This state incremently and subtly crept up on me, and from that state the seeds of depression were sown.

I didn’t catch the change in my behaviour because we weren’t being vigilant enough. Maybe if we (and by we, I mean my mother and I) had been actively on the lookout for changes I might not be lying in bed right now. I’m not saying that I need to be treated with kid gloves or stopped from doing anything that might trigger me. No, I’m not saying that, but maybe a new strategy needs to be put in place. A few signs in my house need to be put up that remind me that it’s a good responsibility to manage my illness. That I have an illness, that despite being on medication, comes up and slaps me merrily on the rear. It’s not nice, it’s not pretty but it is the cold stone truth.

This depression is the first time I haven’t been comatose, which you would think would be a turn up for the books, but it doesn’t feel like that. The extensive period of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I had for 7 years has taught me that there is distance between myself and my thoughts. I know I am not my thoughts, and I also know how to challenge my thoughts. However, despite having this knowledge, because of my miswiring, it doesn’t stop me from feeling the negative emotions attached to them which then spirals me downwards. So I still get powerfully locked into the negative loops in my schemas (established, entrenched patterns of thinking). In this last week I have just started to use again the CBT techniques I was taught. I think the fact, that this time, I haven’t become my thoughts is what has saved me from becoming comatose. It’s lessened my feelings of helplessness. I have mind tools to deploy. My therapist (who was a specialist in persistent severe depression) taught me well.

This is the moment (you would think) I would be cracking open the champagne (if I drank), pulling the party poppers and celebrating the fact I have been given these tools, but I have found this half-processing state to be far worse than the familiar comatose depression state. In the comatose state you’re out of it at least, you’re not feeling anything other than awful; or you’re so out of it it doesn’t matter. In what I’m feeling now- this half-state- you feel so consciously cornered by your head and your schemas. You feel everything, and you are constantly batting off negative thought processes and delving into, and staying with, emotions. It’s tiring, all-consuming and scary (even if the process has the hidden positive of reminding you you can still feel). This strangely makes the thought of the comatose state more attractive. Tackling my negative thinking constantly is wearisome. Writing things down, charting why I feel what I’m feeling. It’s tiring, even though I do know in my heart of hearts it’s probably a healthy responsibility but……nevertheless. It just doesn’t feel like it. If I take on the new ‘I have bipolar’ strategy, I have a lifetime of charting and managing ahead of me, and sometimes (in all honesty) it feels like it would be better for it all to stop. These types of thoughts are the worst and still come back again and again.

It usually takes me a year to recover fully from a depression. Getting through this bit where my constant rumination and negative processing get in the way of me moving forward. However, I absolutely intend to put my ‘I have bipolar’ signs in the house so I don’t forget (even if it looks a bit bonkers). With a new strategy maybe I can catch my negative core beliefs and thoughts more quickly, treat myself more kindly and live a little bit more of an honest life that actually knowingly supports my vulnerability (which is something we all share). This might help prevent the big black drop sheet from dropping down so quickly in the future. It will come back but maybe the next time it might be a little bit more translucent.

For the last two weeks now I have been intending to post out a piece on The Festival of Ideas and ArtiPeeps’ future. It hasn’t materialised for a number of reasons, primarily because I seem to have lost myself somewhere in all the swirl of ‘doing’ and plans for the future. There has been no space for any extraneous writing other than those required by funders. Upon exploration now it has become strikingly clear to me that during this year I seem to have foregone self-care for service, which ultimately (I know) can lead to no good. You don’t need to totally ring yourself dry, background your needs and story for the sake of your passion/vision/project. It’s easy to do but it isn’t health or well-being or sensible. If you do the act is probably rooted in something darker and often in personal history.

I know that my bi-polar doesn’t help the situation. Balance is hard to find when you’re permanently chemically imbalanced, and I’m so driven and generally enthusiastic that I forget that there is an underlying process going on that is triggered by stress and drives me from up to down: if there is an up there WILL be, guaranteed, a down (that is the way of bi-polar, I forget that).

I also have two very active and powerful schemas going on which skew my thinking: what I call my ‘I am responsible’ schema and my ‘Care for others’ schema. These are interwoven patterns of thinking, cognitive miswirings that I have to permanently handle. They are always triggered by ‘doing’ and/or creating and they complicate everything I do. They were powerfully triggered by The Nine Realms, and as this year has gone on I’ve had to manage them more and more. They are strong and nasty and can make me think I’m not good, make me hit myself, or take things away like self-care, meditation, gentleness, food or steadiness and replace it with cruelty, anxiety, sabotage and a level of self-detestation that is hard to understand when you think I would be feeling great about myself.

When I stopped cognitive behavioural therapy, even though I had come to understand my thinking errors profoundly, I knew these miswirings couldn’t be fixed. I was gently told that I just had to become an expert at managing them, and that each time I did it would get a little bit better. Inch work which accumulates. That each time I tried something new, like ArtiPeeps, or the BBC, or the theatre company, or the library, that I would have to face these schemas and ways of thinking again and again. I don’t think I was presumptuous enough to think that I would come through The Nine Realms psychologically unscathed, but I was and am, shocked at how quickly, despite the success of it and the clear benefit, my balance went, how quickly I chose to replace myself with ArtiPeeps and the greater good.

My self-esteem has never been connected to what I do, what I create. You might expect otherwise. My self-esteem has always been nurtured when I have truly felt I have taken care of myself, not sabotaged, not endured or stuck the shards in (again). An intrinsic feeling (consolidation) and not something externally manifested. This is why achieving things externally never lasts for me because by the time whatever I have decided to do has finished I’ve usually died somewhere along the line and am scrambling around in my mind for some resemblance of myself. Why have I done this again?!

It took much longer to tie up The Nine Realms than I expected. There was the success of The Festival of Ideas (which came as a delightful add-on afterwards) the wonderful coming together again, and then the sending out of the backer rewards (delivering) and the last payments of invoices, which only was completed today. Unexpected things cropped up too: I had to rejig The Nine Realms budget for The Arts Council only the week before last when all I wanted was for things to stop. After a year of regular 60 hr a week work patterns and driving myself towards this collective goal and celebration of collaboration, I just wanted it all to stop. How can it be that the event happened 11-15 September and I’m still putting the project to rest at the end of November? Every ounce of me had been given- willingly, and I had to draw on a sense of energy and a positive psychology that wasn’t there anymore. My best self.

I had to use every reserve to complete what needed to be done, whilst my feelings of badness started to become huge (that’s the miswiring and the stress). What should have elicited feelings of joy and pride left me more in contact with my ongoing psychological vulnerability (my grin can hide a lot).

Physically I have had difficulties this year: I now have to walk with a stick a lot of the time, and I am losing mobility in three of my fingers in my left hand. I have cerebral palsy and I think in middle age, things are catching up on me. I soon won’t be able to grip much with my left hand and without my leg brace I walk like a geriatric lobster. I’m having to learn a new way of being, come to terms with the restrictions of my new physicality. When I caught glimpses of myself in The Nine Realms event photos, I was quite shocked at my own vulnerability- how stiff and ungainly I’d become. This physical shift has been going on at the same time as ArtiPeeps’ growth. It’s ironic.

For the past couple of weeks I have banished myself to my bed- to restore my body and mind and to try and reinstate some balance in my life. Every single self-care and physical practice that had been so carefully created over the previous three years vanished during this year. I took it all away myself ,and replaced self-care and myself with ArtiPeeps. It was a willing, wonderful giving which I couldn’t control, but equally it can’t continue because it’s unsustainable, doesn’t allow me to create and nurture my own story, and to give my true best to ArtiPeeps. How can well-being be a fundamental to ArtiPeeps if I don’t practice it myself? It doesn’t set a good example and serves ‘old Nicky’-beliefs that, in reality, are long gone. This is what humanitarian Zainab Salbi said about the nature of giving fully:

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I don’t want to be that rung out towel. I want to continue to grow ArtiPeeps into something wonderful, and to celebrate the creativity and talents of everyone who is involved. I want to serve from a position of strength and (as much as possible) equanimity. Now, I just have to get the balance right and to keep on walking the best way I know how- with integrity, care and a quieter mind.

Addendum:

Here’s a profoundly valuable and insightful video by performance artist Marina Abramović which has further consolidated my belief in the notion of challenge that I have recently embedded into ArtiPeeps’ new artistic statement.

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As ever, thank you for your interest, and I shall endeavour to get a post out about the 3rd ArtiPeeps season of work shortly.

Nicky

P.S. Deb Talan’s song “Tell Your Story Walking” was is inspired by “Motherless Brooklyn”, a novel by Jonathan Lethem

Mixed Episode

by Louise M. Hart

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Through the eons of my sufferingAnd the perpetuity of my painDissociated from the familiarityOf shared meaning and consensual realityThe spectres of madnessMisery and mislead mentalityFuelled my moral shame

Lost in the wilderness of unceasing mental flightAnd the fight to still the rapid thoughtsThat summoned my ecstatic anguish And melancholic blue delightLike a whore I surrendered to the tremors Of the merciless and entrapping night

I dismantled my pedestalOnly to be captured by the arms of jailersPaid to seal my fateTo be the accused in a never ending trialGoverned by the hegemony of The State

Whilst my body became secured Within a hospital wardPoliced by nurses and hateMy mindFormerly determinate and solidFragmented into a thousand fragile partsEach with no knowledge Of the othersAnd belying my flailing sick and tired heart

My inner voice externalised into a universal yellThat began “Help me nurse, I don’t feel well”And culminated in a needle In the arse of the hellOf my enforced unreason And silence

Thus I was baptised for the second timeNot in waterBut in the shrine of my mutilated throatThe shuttered eyeballs of the socially excludedThe flesh of my sacrificial duffel coat

Even my doting Mother could not perceiveThe blood and bones I saw beyond human fleshThe words only I could hearThat inflamed my agitation And saturated my soul with fearAnd ontological distress

I challenged all perceptionAnd claimed that reality was a scamA grand hallucinationIn which existence was womanAnd matter did not matterFor I was the only one and trueLiving Mad Hatter

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Care in the Community?

by Louise M. Hart

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At any time I could freakOr stay in bed for at least a weekAnd they would say“I bet she hasn’t taken her tablets today”

I could shout or cryScream that I wanted to dieAnd they would say“I bet she hasn’t taken her tablets today”

But, what will they sayWhen I take my tablets every day?

Release her like a rehabilitated criminalFrom the padded cell of care in the communityWhere she will lobotomise every opportunityThat comes her way

And refuse to take her tablets any day*I dedicate these poems to any readers who feel alone in their suffering. YOU are not alone.

*’FreeSpace’ offers creatives or groups 3 slots on ArtiPeeps which can be taken up in a cluster or in a sequence over a period of months. They can be used for further showcasing, self-expression or for projects.

If you are interested in FreeSpace, don’t hesitate to get in contact via a reply box, or the form on our ‘What’s On’ Page or via @ArtiPeeps

Louise M. Hart

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North by West Midlands

by Louise M. Hart

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I journeyed north in pursuit of happier thoughtsAnd a deep fried mars barBut, blind were the eyes, watching me arriveAnd burnt was the mars bar

My baggage was heavy with burdensBeside me, were a loving Mother and my black (and white) dogIt had been a long, exhausting rideWhose terminus, Under the conceit of summer sunshine, concealed the cloudy thoughts That burst inside my mind

Thus, I regressed to a developmentally former timeMy awareness of my impending pain Like the cries of a virgin brideHidden from world view

Cradled in the comfort womb of the Scottish landscape“It’s beautiful,” I criedI could never distinguish calculated deceit from honest liesAnd, thus, unpacked my luggage, as though I was holidaying in a land of enlightenment and fun

And the sea called to me, “Run”

So, we turned our backs on reality and ranBilly, my beloved dog before he was taken and IHugging feral fingered trees in the name of city slickersWe blamed ourselves for our inability to defeat the bourgeoisie With our indiscreet charm and our inadvertent attempts at infamy

But, soon the sun was gone

And the trees were as bare as my faceExpressing thoughts as toxically as fumes of human waste

I realised that my end was nigh, when I could no longer cryMy life collapsing, like The State’s self proclaimed fiscal cliffInto the gluttonous foam of the North Sea’s residential homeIn which my austere soul sprayed stingy piss And fired blanks thoughts with life denying regularity

Into gloomy thoughts and conspicuous insanityI entered a race I was born to loseWhose other competitors existed as alien formsSo prolific that I believed mine to be the only existing human faceThat interpreted the unnatural selection of human rejection And the death of universal subjectivity

Wintertime thrust me between the thighsOf a system I summoned, but despisedWhereupon a nurse knocked my gentle doorFor I had slept not, the night beforeRising before the portents of a spreading dawnAnd staring blankly at the dark and silent screen of my television

There are clubs, up north, especially created for the chemically inferiorStaffed by people who, even before the humiliation of an introductionKnow every member’s nameFor in their eyes, we all look the same Sporting diagnostic labels and medicated shufflesOur identities socially constructed and acted out in vain regardFor the needs we espouseAnd contradicted by the nature of the pillsWe consume to reinforce And legitimate the acute angles of the pain we survive

They wiped my arse, but closed their ears when I spokeOffering computerised basket weaving and messages of no hope

Ooh, there’s trouble up northWhen identity crumbles, like ideological rubbleFor I had fallen and been captured by a beast with two facesOne face that soothed my heated browThe other, functioning as subjectivity’s adversarial sacred cow Cock, bull and ball breaker of all fleshy nuts of bone and brainIt destroyed meaning, like the presence of a double negativeIn a sentence, articulated in the open parenthesis of pseudo-silence And intellectual non-sense

Eventually, I wrote a bookAnd defected to the way out west, to try my luck-The mid land of nowhere

Exactly a week has passed since the conclusion of our Kickstarter campaign for Transformations. We had a £4413 project goal and accrued £1392 of it, with 46 backers. A huge thank you to everyone who supported us. This, I feel, is no mean feat and the Transformers and I all worked very hard, full-out, for its duration. Kickstarter campaigns are incredibly labour intensive, I have found!

The conclusion of this Kickstarter could have elicited feelings of despondency, but quite the opposite: financial support has emerged out of the ashes of the campaign; many backers still feeling able to support what we’re doing. We can move forward not really having lost anything. I am also about to put in an application to the arts council to fund the remaining monetary shortfall, and the Chair of ArtiPeeps and I will be trying to secure business sponsorship over the next couple of months.

Overall, I think the campaign has positively foregrounded not only what ArtiPeeps stands for, but also what is behind the opportunities and initiatives we are attempting to provide. It has also brought all the Transformers together much more overtly and we have communicated and worked well together as a collective. Considering this has often been across continents this is amazing.

I am also pleased that via the article in The Cambridge Evening News I may have helped other people with bi-polar by being open about mine. I’ve received a variety of emails and tweets that would indicate this, which is gratifying. Some are creatives and will be taking part in future projects. I couldn’t run ArtiPeeps the way I do with a well-being thread without being fully transparent about my health….

There is a fast turn around on the Arts Council grant of 6 weeks, so my aim is to have that completed by the end of June. Therefore we will know where we are financially by August which gives us time to secure other funding if necessary by 12th September.

Loki, Norse supervillan

I am also intending to put in further applications for our Norse Sagas project next year and our ‘Supporting Mental Health’ exhibition. By procuring funds in advance of our projects this will help secure our initiatives and allow us to move forward from a position of strength. That is the the theory anyway!! From the end of June my time will then be spent on the soft copy exhibition book, ebook and pdf and other sponsorship. We’ll see how that goes…

Our second season of work ended last Friday, and looking back it featured a wide variety of creatives and initiatives: from Millfield School’s Year 9 young poets, to our second hot potato collaborative short story (which is now being illustrated) to our first wood sculptor who is hopefully going to be involved in the Norse Sagas project next year. The ‘Supporting Mental Health’ Initiative has also produced some fantastic work on the themes of Loneliness and Anxiety and Release. The Found Poetry Project has also shown me the delights of creating such poems. Fabulous!

Running the Kickstarter on top of the season of work was a lot of pressure, and it has made me think about how I will run the seasons in the future. Whether I will just have rolling programmes of initiatives, instead of packed three month seasons. I’m going to discuss this with the Management Committee and go from there. With a rolling programme, opportunities could be given in a more consistent, less intense way. Any feedback on this thought would be welcomed. It would also leave room for a spontaneous project which would be no bad thing.

I will be posting out regular updates as we move towards the Transformations exhibition dates, and will post something out in July about the opportunities centred around Norse Sagas.

Thanks so much for your interest, and for having supported us during our Kickstarter campaign. It’s much appreciated, and do get in contact if you’d like to get involved- via the contact form on the What’s On page or via @ArtiPeeps

Creatives Making A Difference

‘Supporting Mental Health’

THE ANXIETY AND RELEASE COLLABORATION

Welcome to the final collaboration of an eight week, fortnightly engagement with the emotions of anxiety and release. For this particular collaboration we have paired four artists and four poets together. The poets have taken up the theme of anxiety, and the artists, in response, are engaging with the theme of release. In so doing we’re attempting to artistically and accessibly engage with the dynamics between the two emotions- the clashes and the spectrum between the two contrasting feelings. The poets and artists have been exchanging ideas over a number of weeks and what you’ll be seeing as the weeks roll by is the diverse expression of that exchange.

The idea is that we will also eventually group these collaborations together into exhibitions and installations to further promote public awareness and engagement with these issues. Your feedback on this project would be very much welcomed.

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This week’s collaboration features

Lauren Coulson & Cliona Sheehan

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‘Lady Released’

by Cliona Sheehan

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Adrenaline

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I try to picture calm oceans, boats, try to distract myself by writing words but my fingers tap out a heart rate that increases too fast.

The fire spreads. Through knots in my spine, up into the throat where it sits wrapped around my oesophagus like bind weed.

Pull up the root. It’s the only way to kill it.

My hands are too tired from digging through to find a calmer place and the poison I’ve laid down just slowly kills the host

Creatives Making A Difference

‘Supporting Mental Health’

THE ANXIETY AND RELEASE COLLABORATION

Welcome to the third collaboration in an eight week, fortnightly engagement with the emotions of anxiety and release. For this particular collaboration we have paired four artists and four poets together. The poets have taken up the theme of anxiety, and the artists, in response, are engaging with the theme of release. In so doing we’re attempting to artistically and accessibly engage with the dynamics between the two emotions- the clashes and the spectrum between the two contrasting feelings. The poets and artists have been exchanging ideas over a number of weeks and what you’ll be seeing as the weeks roll by is the diverse expression of that exchange.

The idea is that we will also eventually group these collaborations together into exhibitions and installations to further promote public awareness and engagement with these issues. Your feedback on this project would be very much welcomed.

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This week’s collaboration features

Lucy Quin and Jack Morris (artist)

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19 Barkley Road

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Barkley Rd

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It’s always the same dream, your house is now empty and the night is lilac purple. I search the hollow rooms for childhood memories under a sky of burnt out stars. You’re seen only in bursts. Memories crawl and dance like shadows along all the walls, but I lose sight of you and the house collapses, everything drops around me. Clawing at the darkness, I fall fast and heavy, eyes dart to catch glimpses of you as they play like movies, but they move too quickly — they always move much too quickly. It is then I wake up and I lay very still. I think of you and your new home, grass has grown over you — how running my fingers along the top of your gravestone feels nothing at all like holding your hand in mine.

To get involved contact us via any of the comments boxes on our posts/pages or @ArtiPeeps. You would be very welcome!

Vikings Ahoy! It’s The Nine Realms!

ONGOING EPICS

THE NINE REALMS (2014-2015):
Watch this space for our next 9-month large-scale collaborative project ! Starting in the 2nd Week of October 2014. Inspired by the Norse Sagas and Norse Cosmology, Giving creative opportunities to nearly 50 creatives. We'll be combining poetry, prose, art, music and sculpting a Viking boat out of ash, Vikings Ahoy!!!

The Nine Realms Poetry Playlist

The Nine Realms Realm Music

PAST EPIC COLLABORATIONS

TRANSFORMATIONS (2013-2014)

A POETRY AND ART EPIC:

31 Creatives from all around the world and the UK showcased through 1 Contemporary Reworking of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Making the virtual real via a poetry-art exhibition held at Hanse House, Norfolk, 12-14th September 2014,

The launch of our large-scale exhibition template to be used to give creatives from all disciplines collaborative opportunities year on year.

Wisdom & Mindfulness

ArtiPeeps Videos On Vimeo

Osho: From The Book of Understanding

EXPRESS YOURSELF IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT FEAR.THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.THERE IS NOBODY WHO IS GOING TO PUNISH OR REWARD YOU. EXPRESS YOUR BEING IN ITS TRUEST FORM, IN ITS NATURAL FLOW, YOU WILL BE REWARDED IMMEDIATELY, NOT TOMORROW BUT TODAY, HERE & NOW. YOU ARE PUNISHED ONLY WHEN YOU GO AGAINST YOUR NATURE. BUT THE PUNISHMENT IS A HELP. IT IS SIMPLY AN INDICATION THAT YOU HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM NATURE, THAT YOU HAVE GONE A LITTLE ASTRAY-OFF THE ROAD-COME BACK. PUNISHMENT IS NO REVENGE.NO, PUNISHMENT IS ONLY AN EFFORT TO WAKE YOU UP: 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?' . SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS GOING AGAINST YOURSELF. THAT'S WHY THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS ANXIETY.

EVOLUTION IS INTRINSIC TO MAN'S NATURE, EVOLUTION IS HIS VERY SOUL, AND THOSE WHO TAKE THEMSELVES FOR GRANTED REMAIN UNFULFILLED. THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE BORN COMPLETE REMAIN UNEVOLVED. THEN THE SEED REMAINS THE SEED. IT NEVER BECOMES A TREE AND NEVER KNOWS THE JOYS OF SPRING AND THE SUNSHINE AND THE RAIN AND THE ECSTASY OF BURSTING INTO MILLIONS OF FLOWERS.